Is Paranoia a Defence against or an Expression of Low Self–Esteem?

Paranoia has been hypothesized to be negatively correlated with self–esteem. However, hypotheses differ about how low self–esteem might produce paranoia. The paranoia as defense model views paranoia as a defensive reaction against low self–esteem. In contrast, the paranoia as expression model views paranoia in part as a reflection of low self–esteem. In the current study, paranoia was negatively associated with global explicit self–esteem, self–competence, self–liking and self–serving attributional style, but unassociated with implicit self–esteem as measured with the Implicit Association Test. In contrast, facets of narcissism, which also have been hypothesized to be associated with defensive self–processing, were associated with defensiveness. Overall, these results suggest that paranoia is better represented by the expression model. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.